


Episodes in the Life of Makoto Kato

by TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead



Category: Street Fighter
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 23:20:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12994731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead/pseuds/TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead
Summary: "The ultimate aim of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of the participant."- Gichin Funakoshi, Founder of Shotokan Karate





	Episodes in the Life of Makoto Kato

At the funeral in Tosa, I barely paid attention to anything except the weather. It was surprisingly nice out for August in the mid-afternoon. No clouds, gentle breeze, mild temperatures. You could wear a coat or not. Despite that, I was tired and cold in a weird way, distinct from the weather somehow. I didn’t have a eulogy to give, and I couldn’t bring myself to really pay attention to any of the speakers. I mostly just stared at the picture on the program and remembered.

 

Dad was thirty-ish and living in the U.S. in 1962. That February, he was hired as an advisor for the CIA, and for a brief, glorious moment, Rindoukan-ryuu was the fighting style the agency taught their recruits. It went to Cuba, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and even Russia, all off-the-record, of course. But still. 

Then, all too quickly, it was phased out in favor of an American-made style, an off-brand sort of judo that allowed for the use of a knife and a pistol, because  _ of course _ the agency would eat that up. The CIA valued lethality above all else. Ashamed and enraged, my dad moved back to Japan, bought a house and built a dojo in the town of Tosa, and after a marriage, a kid, and a nasty divorce, I was born. My dad’s first wife had custody of my brother Jin, and my own mom had died when I was too young to remember, so for most of my life, it was just me and him. 

 

Now it was just me. The funeral attendees had left a few minutes ago. I stayed seated in my chair, limp. Still in disbelief. I closed my eyes and bathed in the silence.

I don’t know how long it was before I heard the gentle rustling of grass, but when I opened my eyes, there were three people, two men and one woman, standing over me. They were Americans. I could tell from their greyish-green Army uniforms and the flag the woman in the middle held, folded up into a triangular package. 

She handed it to me, and spoke in a voice somehow both firm and authoritative, and so quiet I had to strain to hear her.

“On behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States army, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your father’s honorable and faithful service.” 

I took it gingerly and whispered “Thank you” in English as best I could. The Americans took a few steps toward the coffin before the one on the right, a wiry old man with a steel-gray mustache and a tan, leathery face stopped and turned around to face me. I recognized him from photos Dad kept under his bed. 

The old man bowed deeply. I shot to my feet and bowed in return, taken off guard by the gesture. When he came up, his eyes were moist, but his face was still hard as stone. The three Americans walked away, leaving no footprints on the manicured lawn. I was alone again. 

 

With nothing else to do, I drove back to the dojo in his car. When I pulled down the sun visor, a handful of the mints he always seemed to have on him dropped into my lap. The smell of Dad permeated the car instantly, a smoky/minty/rainy scent that marked a hundred small moments in my memory, skewering them like pins in a map. An ache began to bubble up inside my chest, pushing against me from the inside. It felt like a huge rodent clawing its way through my heart and lungs, and any second now it was going to tear a hole through me completely and escape. 

Something gave, and I slammed my open palm against the horn and leaned into it. I could feel the muscles in my face not moving and my eyes not tearing up. I was no more alive than the car.  _ That’s not true, _ I thought.  _ The car is alive enough to scream. _

Almost automatically, I let off the horn and turned the key in the ignition. I drove back to the dojo in my father’s car. The mints on my lap burned like dry ice, but every other part of me was numb. 

 

When I got home, I went to sleep fully clothed and didn’t wake up until almost midnight. The next day, I don’t think I got out of bed. I was able to cry, but it didn’t help as much as I’d hoped it would, and once I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop for what felt like hours. I was stuck in a cycle, alternating between total numbness and gut-wrenching grief. I was becoming delirious. I remember thinking that I had died too, and I had these vivid waking dreams where I was outside my own body, looking at the wadded up napkin on the bed that had once resembled Makoto and grieving all over again. 

 

Ibuki broke into my house on the third day. It was the middle of the afternoon and I was wrapped up in my dad’s old Army jacket, dehydrated from three days worth of crying and smelling like something that had been dead for a week. Apparently, I had left my phone in the car and she’d been trying to reach me since the night after the funeral. 

“I about flipped my shit when I learned that no one had gone home with you or checked up on you in three days. Also, the lock on your front door is broken, I hope you don’t-”

I pulled her against me, buried my face into her chest and bawled. 

 

We ate chicken curry over white rice from a pair of bento boxes she’d made, and when we had finished I lay down and slept for a while with my head in her lap. She ran her fingers through my greasy mop of hair and gently scratched my scalp. 

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. She peered down at me and raised an eyebrow. 

“Do you want me to stop?” she asked.

I thought about it. 

“No.”

She smiled. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew.

“Take as long as you need, Makoto,” and she bent down and planted a soft, gentle kiss on my temple.

 

Eventually, I fell asleep completely, and when I woke up, Ibuki had run me a bath. My skin was hard with a layer of salt, as though every pore had become a tear duct, and my hair felt similarly stiff. It didn’t take much coaxing to get me in the tub.

Ibuki knew me. She knew the temperature I liked my bathwater (somewhere between onsen and witch’s cauldron), how much I secretly adored bubble baths (a lot) and what I liked to wear when I was sad (hoodie, fleece socks, cargo pants). She had my back. Just knowing that pushed away the cold even more than the scalding bathwater. 

 

“How do you feel?” she asked me later, as we drove aimlessly through town.

I cracked a mint between my teeth and breathed in. The sun was setting behind us, and it turned the sky neon orange. I thought about the sound of cemetery grass crunching beneath the old man’s polished leather shoes. I imagined my dad walking beside him, his feet bare, his steps silent, his  _ gi _ fluttering gently in the dry summer breeze.

“Better,” I decided. “Gettin’ better.”


End file.
